Ask to Be Unbroken
by burnmedown
Summary: After the Gucci deployment gone bad, Sonny comes home, makes the most of his time with Lisa, and starts to figure out that Clay might not be quite as healed as he wants to pretend - a realization driven home by an ugly incident that reopens old wounds, in more ways than one. (Set during and after 2x22)


Content warning for non-graphic attempted sexual assault in a bar setting. The assault is prevented and the attempt happens entirely offscreen, but the situation could be triggering for some, so I wanted to make sure to give a warning up front.

Thanks to bcblueeyes, whose prompt inspired this story. I hope you like it!

* * *

The cane is the first real hint that things with Spenser maybe aren't quite as resolved as the kid is trying to pretend they are.

After all the hugs and greetings, after everybody (save for Ray, who's already gone off to reunite with Naima) mills around for a while, Clay announces that he's catching a ride with Brock and his girlfriend. Sonny can't quite determine whether Spenser has figured out that something is up with him and Davis and means to give them space, or just genuinely does want to hang out with Brock for a while. The kid can be hard to read, even for those closest to him - and he and Brock _are_ good friends. Reynolds was hit hard by what happened in Manila. He's always quiet, but he was damn near mute for days afterward.

Whatever the cause, Clay ends up taking off with Brock, while Sonny and Lisa linger in the parking lot a little longer, chatting with Jason and teasing Emma and Mikey. Sonny spends the entire time forcing himself to act casual while being painfully aware that Lisa is _right there,_ beautiful and feisty and smelling like heaven, and he's not allowed to kiss her yet even though that's all he's wanted to do for _weeks._

Jesus. He's got it _bad._

After what is probably only a few minutes but feels like ages, he and Davis make their excuses and get in the car and drive somewhere that they can safely make out like teenagers.

Once Sonny is a little clearer-headed, he notices the cane abandoned in the front seat.

"Clay forget this?" He asks, holding it up, fitting his fingers around the handle and imagining what it might feel like to have no choice but to lean on it everywhere he went.

Davis shakes her head. "Abandoned it right before y'all showed up. Said he didn't need it." She rolls her eyes fondly.

Huh. Sonny looks at the cane and thinks about that. About what the odds are that Clay needed his cane right up until the minute his boys came home, and then magically didn't anymore.

Nah. Much more likely that the stubborn kid just didn't want his team to see him looking 'weak' - as though using a cane for a while after getting _blown up_ could possibly qualify as weakness.

_Idiot,_ Sonny scoffs to himself, even though he does sort of understand. He tosses the cane into the back seat.

In the following days, there's so much going on that Sonny almost forgets about it. There's him and Lisa and the few weeks that they have to try to cram a lifetime into. There's Swanny's funeral, which is hard on everybody - especially Clay. Sonny's heart breaks a little when the kid apologizes for failing his friend, when he places his own Purple Heart atop the casket.

Spenser has always felt the need to try to shoulder more than his own weight. The bombing sure doesn't seem to have changed that.

And yeah, Sonny noticed how hard Clay had to work to help carry the casket, how he nearly stumbled a few times but caught himself; he just doesn't really know how to respond to it. Remembers Jason telling him to let Clay handle his injury and recovery his own way, and does his best to follow that advice.

Even so, he can't resist trying, at least a little, to suss out exactly what's going on. Sure, he's maybe a little preoccupied with Lisa, with making the most of the much-too-short time they have left together, but he's still probably Clay's closest friend, and he notices things: the cane, the wincing, the limp. He tries, without crossing lines or pushing too hard, to ask about Spenser's rehab regimen.

The kid won't have it. He gives vague answers, changes the subject, and stubbornly tries to pretend that everything is _absolutely fine, Sonny, why wouldn't it be?_

It's like Clay is determined, at least as far as interaction with his team is concerned, to erase Manila like it never happened - and while Sonny would love for there to be a way to accomplish that, he knows that there isn't. Especially not this soon. Not before Clay has even finished recovering from injuries that almost killed him and came even closer to crippling him.

Knowing that, though, doesn't mean Sonny knows how to get through to Clay about it, so he lets it go. He politely overlooks the way Spenser plays off every stumble with the casual, forced dignity of a cat that's just been caught falling off a table.

Sonny wakes up next to Lisa every morning. He makes her breakfast, and sometimes catches her watching him cook while wearing a soft smile that makes his chest feel like it's caving in. They drink coffee and watch the sun rise, curled around each other like they can manage to get close enough that nothing could ever pull them apart.

They hang out with Clay off and on, and Sonny tries not to let himself get judgy about the fact that Spenser is apparently giving his relationship with Stella another shot. It's not even about Sonny not liking Stella. Okay, it's _sort of_ about that, but it's mostly just that he remembers Mexico, and it was bad, and he doesn't want to go through it again. Stella needs to figure herself out, make up her damn mind one way or the other and stick to it, because Sonny doesn't want to be left picking up the pieces if she rips Clay's heart out again.

Especially not now. That kid has been through too much hell lately.

Sonny knows Spenser is tough. Like all of them, he's good at taking the punches and then picking himself back up off the deck. Sonny watched him, as a rookie, endure a helicopter crash no one should have survived and walk away from it freakin' _cheerful_ and ready to kick ass.

It's just that everybody has a breaking point. Sonny doesn't know where Clay's is, and he doesn't want to find out, and he's afraid that if the kid gets his heart broken again so soon, he might.

All that said, Quinn isn't not sure he really has much room to talk, because it's not like he and Davis were exactly being smart by getting together the way they did. They both know this thing of theirs isn't likely to end well, but that doesn't mean they're either one willing to give it up.

As it turns out, when things do go bad for Spenser, it doesn't have anything to do with Stella at all. She isn't even there. They're out at a bar, all of Bravo and most of Alpha, plus Davis. The place is crowded and chaotic, the music is loud, and Sonny has had just enough to drink that Lisa has to keep pulling back and kicking his ankle to remind him he can't currently just lean in and kiss her whenever he wants.

He doesn't even notice when Clay gets up to go to the bathroom. Has no idea the kid is gone until the commotion breaks out.

There's yelling toward the back of the bar, where the bathrooms are. Everybody looks around and registers that they're missing someone, which for Bravo feels like the worst kind of deja vu, and then they're moving toward the scuffle.

Sonny makes it through the crush of the crowd to see what everybody is looking at. Beyond the restrooms, there's a back door that opens out into the alley behind the bar. It's currently standing open, and beyond it, Clay Spenser is trying to restrain a man Sonny has never seen before.

It only takes Sonny an instant to evaluate the situation and make a judgment. The man may be taller and heavier than Clay, but he's also drunk and doesn't handle himself like he's got training. Even as Sonny moves forward to help, to try to keep things from getting out of hand, he knows that Spenser has things under control.

Except he doesn't.

The man struggles loose and throws a clumsy punch, which Clay dodges, just as Sonny knew he would - but then Spenser's leg buckles. He stumbles, arms going out reflexively for balance, and takes a gut punch that bends him forward.

Sonny puts on a burst of speed and gets there a millisecond too late to stop the asshole from grabbing Clay by the hair and slamming his head into the wall with a gut-wrenching crack.

Spenser goes down in a heap. There's a lot of yelling. Sonny grabs the man and jerks him back just as he tries to aim a kick at Clay. Anxious to check his teammate, Sonny passes the asshole off to Full Metal, who slams him to the ground, puts a knee in his back, jerks his arms up behind him at what has to be an agonizing angle, and tells him very calmly, "Now, you shouldn't have done that."

Sonny's terror lessens only slightly when he realizes Spenser is moving, already trying to get his arm under him so he can sit up. Mouth dry as a desert, Sonny puts a gentle hand on Clay's shoulder, winces at the resulting flinch, and tells him in a gentle but firm voice, "We got you. You're safe. Stay down till Trent can check you out."

Clay, eyes wild, hair already soaked with blood, completely ignores him. "The girl," he says, in a tone bordering on panic. "Where's the girl?"

_Girl?_

Sonny sits back on his heels and looks around, seeing his teammates, all hovering near, doing the same thing.

It's Lisa who finds the girl, crumpled in the shadow of a dumpster. Soon as Sonny sees her, the pieces of the puzzle slot together in his head, and he wants to kill something. Preferably the asshole who's still being pinned down by Full Metal.

The girl's clothes are askew, but she's still wearing all of them. Sonny figures, hopes, that's a good sign.

Clay tries to wipe away the blood that's starting to sheet down his face. He catches sight of Jason and pulls himself together enough to give a sitrep. "She - I think she was drugged," he says. "Saw him takin' her out. I yelled, but it was too loud in there, and I didn't - I figured she didn't have time for me to go for backup."

"Yeah," Jason says gently, leaning down to squeeze Clay's shoulder. "Yeah, she probably didn't. You did good, buddy."

Trent starts trying to find the head wound, to figure out just how bad this is, but Clay pushes him away, pointing toward the unconscious girl whose face Lisa is gently patting. "Check on her. Might be an overdose."

Trent shakes his head a little, catches Sonny's eye, and heads over to check on the young woman.

Sonny carefully combs through the bloody hair until he finds the gash, then puts pressure on it, quietly apologizing when Clay jerks with pain. Jason uses his phone light to check Clay's pupils. To no one's surprise, he appears to be the proud owner of a concussion.

Once they've gotten the bleeding mostly under control, Ray retrieves some damp napkins to wipe the worst of the blood from Spenser's face. Having done what they can, the team forms a quiet, protective circle around their kid while they wait for the police and the ambulance to arrive.

After a few minutes, Spenser lets out a frustrated sigh. "This shouldn't - I should've handled it." He adds, with a quiet, well-worn sort of bitterness, "God, I'm _useless."_

Sonny pats Clay's arm to get his attention, then tips his head toward the unconscious young woman Lisa is still guarding like a puffed-up mama hen. "Reckon that girl over there is gonna think you're useless?"

Clay glances away, wincing even at that small movement. The pain lines around his eyes say he must have one hell of a headache.

"Kid," Sonny tells him, "you ain't useless. You're just still hurt. There is a big damn difference." He waits until Clay finally makes eye contact before adding, "Ain't no shame in bein' hurt. You got that?"

Spenser sighs again, looks down, and is saved from having to answer by the arrival of sirens and flashing lights.

Clay flatly refuses to go in an ambulance, insisting that his teammates can drive him to the hospital. Sonny, remembering Clay's last ambulance ride in Manila, can't really blame him for feeling that way. The others must agree, because nobody argues too much.

As the paramedics get the limp girl on a backboard and start to load her into the ambulance, Lisa catches Sonny's eye. With one last pat to Clay's shoulder, he gets up and heads over to find out what she wants to tell him.

"I'm going with her to the hospital," Davis says. "She shouldn't be alone. If she has to deal with the cops, or-" She takes a breath, sets her jaw. "I'm gonna stay with her till her family arrives. Longer, if she wants."

God, Sonny loves this woman.

"That's good," he tells her. "That's a real good idea."

Hugging isn't an option with so many eyes around, so they settle for a quick hand clasp in the shadows between them, her fingers lingering on his wrist for a few seconds before she lets go.

Freakin' San Diego. How the hell are they gonna do this?

As the ambulance pulls away and Full Metal hands off the rapey asshole to the police, Sonny goes back to help with getting Clay into a car so he can get his noggin checked out. Just when they're about to try to pull the kid to his feet, he looks at Trent, announces in a barely audible voice that his head hurts, and then passes out.

At that point, all the bystanders get to see what it looks like when five tier one Navy SEALs have simultaneous, carefully controlled panic attacks.

Apparently Clay isn't the only one who hasn't quite fully recovered from Manila yet.

All Sonny can think, holding Clay in his lap while Trent scrambles to check his vitals, is that Spenser isn't allowed to survive a goddamn IED blast only to die of head trauma from a fight in a dingy alley behind a bar.

"I think he's okay to move. Let's get him to the hospital," Trent says.

Sitting in the waiting room sucks, but at least this time there's good news at the end of the wait. Spenser's got a nasty concussion and they want to keep him for observation, but his skull isn't fractured and so far there's no sign of a brain bleed or any of the other ugly possibilities that were percolating in everybody's minds.

Basically, he just needs rest and time, and he'll be all right.

Lisa calls with an update on the girl, who is stable but still unconscious from whatever drug that asshole slipped into her drink. She says she's gonna wait with her for a while longer. When he tells her that Spenser is okay, she lets out a sharp breath, and he can picture her curling forward in relief.

Sonny kind of loves the fact that Lisa and Clay are good friends in their own right, since they're two of the people who mean the most to him in the entire world.

Jason manages to convince the hospital staff that they should let someone familiar stay with Spenser through the night, but they refuse to allow more than one person. Sonny puts his foot down. It's gonna be him, and that's final.

Spenser wakes a few times during the night, mostly to throw up and make unhappy noises before going right back to sleep. It isn't until the next morning that he's coherent enough for Sonny to plow ahead with the conversation he started trying to have back in the alley. It's been floating around in his head for a while now, and he needs to get it said before he loses his nerve.

He hands the kid a fresh ice pack, and then he says, "You remember what I told you back there, about not being useless?"

Clay fidgets for a minute, arranging the ice pack just so over the knot on his head. Finally he says, "Yeah."

"Well, like I said, there's no shame in needing time to heal. We've all of us been there before, and I get it. I know it sucks to feel like the weak link. But if you need help with something, or you need to sit down for a while or use your cane on a bad day, ain't a one of us will think any less of you for it, okay?" He pauses to let that sink in. "Clay, we're just - we're real glad you pulled through, because we thought you might not. And you don't have to pretend everything is fine when it isn't yet. Okay?"

Spenser looks down to where he's twisting his fingers in the blanket. He clears his throat. "Yeah. Okay."

"Good." Sonny pats him on the arm, as much to comfort himself as for Clay. Not gonna lie, this shook him the hell up. He isn't looking forward to the first time the kid gets banged up in the field after he returns to Bravo. They'll get through it all right, because that's what they do, but it ain't gonna be fun for anybody.

Before the silence can turn awkward, Clay breaks it by asking where his phone is. Sonny digs it out, then hesitates. "Guessin' you want me to call Stella."

Clay sighs. "Look, I know you don't like her-"

"Ain't that I don't like her," Sonny semi-lies. "Just that I don't want to end up hauling your drunk ass around again while you mope."

"I get it," Clay says, "but if it doesn't work out this time, hopefully she and I will both manage to be a little more grown-up about it."

Sonny nods. "Seems likely," he agrees. "After all, y'all've had a whole few months to mature since then."

Clay rolls his eyes, then goes very pale. Sonny gives him a basin and tells him, "Probably shouldn't ought to do that."

After breathing through the spike of pain and nausea, Spenser deadpans, "Yeah. Thanks." He holds out his hand for the phone. "I'll call her."

"You sure?"

"Sonny. I am capable of talking on the phone."

Sonny shrugs and gives it to him. Then he goes and gets some coffee. Ain't like he wants to eavesdrop.

He returns to learn that Stella is on her way, but she was at a research interview and it's a three-hour drive, so it'll be a while before she arrives.

"I'll stay till she gets here," he immediately declares.

Clay raises his eyebrows. "You sure?"

"Yep." He settles in the chair with his coffee.

"I'm probably not very good company right now," Clay says a little apologetically, sliding down in the bed so that his hair sticks up against the pillow. "God, I hate being in the hospital."

"Don't think anybody would blame you for that, Goldilocks."

Spenser ends up coping with the headache and the hospital issues by just passing out and sleeping straight through the next few hours. By the time he wakes up, Stella should be arriving soon, and Sonny has started to gather his things in preparation for leaving to meet up with Davis, who reported that the girl is awake and in the capable, protective hands of her family and best friend.

"Before you go, I've got a question," Clay says, his voice a little slurred and loopy.

Sonny takes a breath. "Shoot."

"Are y'all ever gonna stop calling me 'kid'?"

He gives that due consideration, then grins. "Nah."

Clay cracks his eyes open, wincing at the light, so that he can give Sonny a disbelieving stare. "When I'm 50, you're still gonna be calling me a kid?"

"Yep," Sonny drawls.

Spenser groans, dramatically flings an arm over his eyes, and says, "Go away."

Sonny laughs and obeys. He's almost to the door when Clay adds slyly, "Say hi to Lisa for me."

Little shit.

Sonny doesn't stop smiling all the way out to the car.


End file.
